Bowdoin College Research

A River Lost and Found: The Androscoggin in Time and Place

A River Lost and Found: The Androscoggin in Time and Place
A River Lost and Found: The Androscoggin in Time and Place

Previously labeled as one of nation’s most polluted rivers, the Androscoggin River has slowly, if incompletely, recovered over time. Yet the river that allegedly inspired the 1972 Clean Water Act remains veiled in stereotype and ignored by the thousands who live along it.

“A River Lost and Found” explores the hidden past and neglected present of this important New England waterway. Our collaborative project combines photography, oral history, archival research, and non-fiction writing. Here we present a selection of our still-unfolding work. Together we ask how an injured river might reveal an ethic of place that embraces the complexities of human and natural history together. Our answers may suggest how we can embrace places that are neither pristine nor completely despoiled—the very places so many of us call home.

Site:  A River Lost and Found: The Androscoggin in Time and Place

 

Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin
Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

In the fall of 1971, the first full class of women students arrived on the Bowdoin College campus, ushering in official coeducation. Forty years later, in 2011, when women formed just over 50% of the student body, a group of Bowdoin students took on the task of documenting the history of the College’s move to coeducation.

The information gathered here, based on archival research and oral history interviews and as part of a class project, provides an intriguing, instructive, and in hindsight often humorous glimpse of Bowdoin College before, during, and after coeducation. What we call the “prehistory” begins exactly one hundred years before coeducation, with Bowdoin president Joshua Chamberlain’s 1871 inaugural address, in which he called for the admission of women to the College. It continues through, among other dates and events, Sarah Orne Jewett’s 1901 honorary degree, women faculty teaching on campus during World War II, and the 1969 arrival of women students via the Twelve College Exchange program.

The site includes a timeline as well as documents, photos, and audio and video recollections related to six additional themes: the process of coeducation, the curriculum, extracurricular activities, social life and fraternities, athletics, and the Women’s Resource Center.

Please explore the site and learn about the motivations of college officials who pushed for coeducation; the first female athletes and their struggles for uniforms and for competitors; the challenges of being the first women in spaces as distinct as classrooms, fraternity houses, and student government; the responses of male students to as massive a change as coeducation; and the observations of faculty, male and female, who watched the process unfold. Celebrate and commemorate forty years of women at Bowdoin by sharing in the vital documents and living memories on display here.

Site: Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

 

Maine Rivers, Estuaries and Coastal Fisheries – ecological and economic connections

Maine Rivers, Estuaries and Coastal Fisheries - ecological and economic connections
Maine Rivers, Estuaries and Coastal Fisheries - ecological and economic connections

“Maine Rivers, Estuaries and Coastal Fisheries” is a collaborative project which brings together scientists and students from Bowdoin College, Bates College, the University of Southern Maine,  the Penobscot East Resource Center, the University of Maine and stakeholders throughout the two watersheds. Members of our research team have long and significant experience working on environmental issues related to Maine’s rivers and coastal waterways.

Our research seeks to understand the ecological and socioeconomic influences on recovery of our rivers, estuaries, and coastal marine environments. A project of the program  Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative at the University of Maine, funded through Maine-EPSCoR program, we have identified key ecological changes occurring in the combined Kennebec-Androscoggin river watersheds and estuary-nearshore marine ecosystems.  To understand the reciprocal interactions and feedbacks between the human and ecological dimensions of these systems, we are investigating both  ecological and socioeconomic dimensions of Maine’s waterways and neighboring communities.

Site:  Maine Rivers, Estuaries and Coastal Fisheries – ecological and economic connections

 

Black Women and Pentecostalism in Diaspora: a two-day symposium

Black Women and Pentecostalism in Diaspora: a two-day symposium
Black Women and Pentecostalism in Diaspora: a two-day symposium

“Black Women and Pentecostalism in Diaspora” is a two-day symposium, which will bring together leading scholars in Africana, religious, and feminist studies, history, political science, anthropology, sociology, and ethnomusicology who work in the United States, Haiti, Guadeloupe, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Britain. Participants will unpack the elements of Pentecostalism’s appeal, the myriad ways adherents shape and are shaped by its beliefs and practices, and the extent to which the global south and minority populations in the global north impact the twenty-first century world. This symposium will extend current scholarship on Pentecostalism by interrogating continuities and discontinuities of religious practices and experiences at the intersection of three key theoretical frameworks: “race,” gender, and diaspora.

Symposium Dates:  April 20-22, 2012.

Site:  Black Women and Pentecostalism in Diaspora: a two-day symposium